Course Descriptions

Undergraduate Courses

• CLT 561. European Children's Fantasy Fiction. Prof. Jerry Farber. Class Schedule: Wednesdays, 7:00-9:40 p.m.
  Let’s define terms. "Fantasy" here is to be understood in the broad sense: not just epic fantasy, but fantasy in general. "European": we’ll be reading fiction from Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Germany, and Austria (tentative list). "Children’s": All of the works on our list will be novels that were written for young readers, and we’ll be reading them in the context of the history of children’s literature and in relation to some of the principal issues that have been raised in the academic study of children’s literature. I hope that this course will be worthwhile both for people who are pursuing a specialization in children’s literature and for people who are just looking for a really good comparative fiction course.

• ENGL 502: Adolescence in Literature. Professor Phillip Serrato. Class Schedule: Mondays and Wednesdays, 3:30-4:45 p.m.
  This semester we will survey the ways that adolescence has been depicted in a splendid sample of texts. We will begin by accompanying Alice, Frank and Joe Hardy, and Nancy Drew on their adventures in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Tower Treasure, and The Secret of the Old Clock, contemplating on the way how the experience of adolescence is configured in these early texts. Then we will take an interesting look at the landscapes of male adolescence drawn out by James Joyce and J.D. Salinger in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and The Catcher in the Rye. After looking at some other classics like Judy Blume's Deenie and S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, and asking, What's with Deenie's secret place? and, Why does Pony Boy have Paul Newman on his mind? we'll plunge into more contemporary fare that expands the parameters of adolescent literature. We'll consider the breakthroughs managed by Patricia McCormick in Cut, Zoe Trope in Please, Don't Kill the Freshman, and Juan Felipe Herrera in Downtown Boy. For the last unit we will look at a futuristic vision of adolescence with Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. Requirements include 2 exams, a final exam, a paper, and frequent in-class writing. For a specific reading schedule, you are welcome to email the instructor (pserrato@mail.sdsu.edu) over the summer.

Graduate Courses

• Golden Age of American Children's Books, 1865-1914. Prof. J. Griswold. Class Schedule: Thursdays; 7:00 to 9:40
  

  The period between the Civil War and World War I is often referred to as "The Golden Age of American Children's Literature." It was a time when "the majors wrote for minors," when children's books headed the bestseller lists, when many American children's "classics" were written, and when our culture was formulating new notions of the "Child." We will take up a number of these classics: L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, and others. At the same time, we will take an abbreviated tour of American Children's Literature before this period (e.g., colonial deathbed scenes, Longfellow, Irving, Hawthorne, and Weem's famous incident of the young George Washington chopping down the cherry tree) and consider as well the legacies of the Golden Age in juvenile offerings that followed.